"The rising trend is the worrisome part of it," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since 2000, as their economies revived, countries in Eastern Europe also increased their emissions, rising by 4.1% according to the agency.

From 2000 to 2004, according to the U.N. data, the U.S., which isn't a party to Kyoto, had a slower increase in emissions (1.3%) than members of the European Union (2.4%). EU members have committed to drop their emissions by 8%, compared with 1990 levels, by 2012.

That the EU is increasing the rate of emissions faster than the US inspite of its members pledge to reduce them illustrates how difficult it is to curtail emissions through restriction. Stateside, we're doing a better job of curtailing emissions growth without hampering economic growth. Oil prices probably have something to do with that, as US consumers switch from SUVs and other gas-guzzlers to more fuel efficient vehicles. Nonetheless, last year, the US economy grew 3.5%, while the European Union limped along at 1.7%. So the EU is growing its emissions faster but its economy slower than the US! No wonder the WSJ-types ridicule the Kyoto Protocols so relentlessly.

Even if anthopogenic warming is occuring, I'm not convinced it'll be bad, especially for those in cooler climates (largely the developed world). It'll boost agricultural yields, increase economic activity (mild winters are good for retail and entertainment), decrease natural gas prices, make more accessible fish and oil in the Arctic (estimated to contain about a quarter of the world's supply), and hopefully make mostly uninhabited freezers like northern Canada, Greenland, and Siberia more inhabitable, so that surrounding high IQ populations can 'settle' them and procreate.

But if it is catastrophic, the environmental movement needs to find a better way to get nations to respond to the threat. This seems to illustrate how mandating emission-reductions stifles economic growth. If you agree to take part, you're going to be shooting yourself in the foot now for some perceived benefit in the future that will be shared by all. Those refusing to reduce emissions putatively still benefit from your reductions without having to sacrifice economic growth. It's a win-win for those not actively trying to reduce emissions, and a rough situation for those who do. It seems to me the way forward has to be through innovation. Make greener technologies that are economically viable (photovoltaics, fuel cells, etc) and the problem fixes itself. Green crusaders need to invest in companies conducting this sort of research. SRI is preferrable to governmental regulation (especially on an international scale).

Would be a lot more devastating than global warming. The indefatigable Al Fin, who has multiple blogs and apparently has overcome the soporific mortal's daily need for sleep, points to a report out of the Russian Academy of Sciences astronomical observatory that predicts global cooling by mid-century:

Global cooling could develop on Earth in 50 years and have serious consequences before it is replaced by a period of warming in the early 22nd century, a Russian Academy of Sciences’ astronomical observatory’s report says, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Friday. Environmentalists and scientists warn not about the dangers of global warming provoked by man’s detrimental effect on the planet’s climate, but global cooling. Though never widely supported, it is a theory postulating an overwhelming cooling of the Earth which could involve glaciation.

The most recent ice age came near the end of the Pleistocene around 11,000 years ago. The last Wurm glaciation was the grand finale in a turbulent period of harsh cold spells that covered most of Europe and Asia in glaciers, pushing homo sapiens along with several other large mammalian species into southern of Europe and back toward the Meditteranean area. It is possible, however, that our current interglacial period could come to an end, or that we might enter a relatively short period of cooling, as the Russian Academy predicts.

There's a lot of smoke being blown up around climatic change, and I'm certainly not erudite enough to cut through it. Interglacial periods historically have lasted longer than 10,000 years. Nonetheless, global cooling appears exponentially more threatening to humanity than global warming does.

Khabibullo Abdusamatov said he and his colleagues had concluded that a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century — when canals froze in the Netherlands and people had to leave their dwellings in Greenland — could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2060. He said he believed the future climate change would have very serious consequences and that authorities should start preparing for them today because “climate cooling is connected with changing temperatures, especially for northern countries.”

“The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times,” he said, referring to an international treaty on climate change targeting greenhouse gas emissions.

I don't profess to know enough to speculate one way or another on what will happen with regard to global climatic shifts in the future, but the putatively 'consensus' view that anthropogenic global warming is occuring and that humanity must do whatever it takes to stop it from occuring is anything but.

In Switzerland, a group of college students and local laborers sat down for a brief memory test a couple of years ago. They were given 30 words and then asked, five minutes later, to repeat them. On average, they recalled eight.

Last summer, American scientists equipped with a powerful new gene-testing technology gave this simple test an extra twist. DNA samples of the best and worst word-recallers were flown to Phoenix, where their DNA was checked with machines that can scour it for 500,000 genetic variations at lightning speed...

TGen got the DNA samples and used the new chips to scan all of the samples in less than a month. Dr. Stephan says the work turned up more than 100 gene variants that seemed to show up more frequently in people with good episodic memories. The researchers then repeated the experiments in two other groups, including 256 elderly people from the retirement community of Sun City, Ariz.

TGen researchers say they've narrowed their findings to what they believe to be five memory-related genes.

The opportunity to correlate different genetic variations with countless social, physiological, and psychological outcomes is going reveal the etiology of so much of the human diversity generally assumed to be caused by differences in environment.

The price of chips that detect over 300,000 genetic markers is falling rapidly:

While the technology is still expensive, in the past nine months the price of some chips has fallen rapidly to around $750 each, from $1,200, according to Dr. Stephan.

That's roughly in line with Moore's Law. As the chips become less cost prohibitive, sociologists and other researchers will be able to start exploring the relationship between genes and virtually every human trait or behavior imanginable. Amateur enthusiasts will also be able to get into the game.

The memory test on Swiss kids is a short step away from being an IQ test. Predictably there is unease:

If the studies of gene variants do prove as powerful as adherents believe, they are likely to raise thorny societal issues. That's because the same tools that can find variants that raise disease risk might identify genes that influence any measurable human trait, including height, weight or even intelligence.

Why be afraid of the truth? Celebrate diversity. Isn't that the mantra? Many putative diversity boosters want to break the perceived monopoly of the WASP burgher's value system, but they dogmatically maintain that the human mind is a tabula rasa. They do not want to discover the real causes of diversity, nor do they want to entertain diversity of thought.

Putting the controversy aside, the benefits of cheap and quick gene testing will be enormous. If your child has a gene variation that puts him at high risk for obesity, you will be able to form good eating habits early, like starting him on skim milk instead of whole milk. The military will be able to determine branch assignments based on risk tolerance. Those with the genes to thrive in high pressure situations can be put into infantry or artillery while the fainter of heart are assigned to support branches. Research will help the medical community better understand a host of diseases and how to combat them. Parents will be able to guide their kids into athletics or music or chess club based on inherent strengths. The list goes on forever.

Society as a whole will lose a lot of deadweight loss as people align their lives in ways that utilize personal strengths, compensate for weaknesses, and fulfill desires.

My budget substantially reduces or eliminates more than 150 government programs that are not getting results, or duplicate current efforts, or do not fulfill essential priorities. The principle here is clear: Taxpayer dollars must be spent wisely, or not at all.

A cynic might snipe at the $500 billion that will have been spent on Iraq by the end of 2007. And certainly the budget cuts are diminutive in comparison to, well, much of anything. The $14 billion Bush has cut from the 2006 budget amounts to .005% (.00005 of the total budget mind you!).

Fundamental change has to occur for the lilliputian cuts to do anything more than score hollow ideological points. A staggering 47% ($1.32 trillion) of the 2006 federal budget will go to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Formulas for use of these programs are set by law--Bush cannot arbitrarily make cuts to them--the law must be changed. Demographic shifts make that increasingly unlikely, however, as some eighty million or so baby boomers will begin to become eligible for Social Security early retirement benefits. By early next decade, the diluge will be upon us. By 2040 it's estimated that every two workers will be funding the Social Security and Medicare costs of one retiree. With healthcare costs growing at three times the rate of inflation, that's going to be beyond untenable without huge cuts in benefits or devastating tax increases.

Medicare and Medicaid currently cost slightly more than Social Security, but they will extend their lead considerably in the coming years. By 2026 M&M will represent 22% of the US GDP (currently it's only 4.5%). Social Security's growth is flatter (4.2% of GDP today, projected to be 6.4% by 2050). The ominous portent referenced above is put into sharp contrast by these figures. Currently, the federal government's entire revenues amount to only 18% of GDP. In other words, if we were to be taxed at the same rates as we are today in 2050, we wouldn't even give up enough to pay for Medicare and Medicaid, let alone Social Security, interest on the public debt ($217 billion a year and growing), defense and education spending, and so forth.

Cutting benefits drastically, while infinitely appealing to my young mind, is becoming progressively less realistic as America ages. The political clout of groups like the AARP are going to increase, not decrease. The median age is already over 36, and it's becoming more grey by the day. Support for the Administration's Social Security partial privatization was strong among youths and eroded steadily as age increased (an aside: The puerile standing ovation the Democrats gave themselves when Bush mentioned his failed attempt at reform in the State of the Union address reminded me why, as disenfranchised as I feel by the Republican Party, my decision at the polls is always between Republican and third party).

Does a third option exist? SENS research theoretically could be an azoth, but beyond basic conceptuality it's too far over my head to comment on (if you're looking for a new destination for your charity dollars, this might be a cause to consider).

Another potentiality that is possible with current technology is the utilization of euthanasia for humans. The healthcare cost across the life an individual is a crescendo, increasing substantally as one enters the last years of life. The top 1% of people to whom health care expenditures are directed make up 12.8% of the total cost. The top 10% comprise over half. As people's bodies break down, they have to spend evermore on medicines and doctor's visits. The last few days can cost in the tens of thousands in some cases. Letting people go out on their own accord would lessen not only the financial burden of fighting a losing battle against undefeated death but also save the suffering of friends and family members who must witness the sad deterioration of one with Alzheimer's or terminal cancer. Further, it would alleviate pain by allowing one to drift comfortably to sleep instead of agonizing terribly and then dropping off.

Currently Oregon is the only state in the US with restricted voluntary euthanasia. There needs to be restrictions. For example, adolescents should be barred from it unless terminally ill and with the consent of parents. People deemed mentally unstable should similarly be restrained. But for those faced with a preciptous decline in health and quality of life should have the option to go out with dignity for the betterment of those they are leaving behind.

For the first time on record, Japan's population has started to decline -- a troubling demographic low point long expected but reached two years earlier than predicted. Figures released by the government, based on preliminary data up to October, show that the number of deaths exceeded births in 2005 for the first time since officials started keeping records in 1899.

This problems this trend is likely to create beggars the imagination:

"If the number of children keeps decreasing, economic problems will result, such as a reduction in the labor force and a slowdown in spending," the Yomiuri Shimbun daily commented on Friday. "The sustainability of the social security system will be at risk, too."

Shrinking numbers of younger workers will increasingly be employed in industries that provide services to the elderly instead of engaging in innovative and entrepreneurial activities that create wealth. Tax rates will be raised to cover the healthcare and social security costs for an expanding number of people who will require such services. This will further slow economic growth and human progression. Enormous amounts of human capital will leave the marketplace via retirement without being fully replaced. The economic pressure this will put on the shoulders of the younger may lead them to have even fewer children than their parents, further accentuating the problem. Hopefully SENS research will make a breakthrough that finally defeats aging and renders the problem of less fertility a thing of the past, but I'm not content to count on it.

When preferred family size was first measured by Gallup in the U.S. in 1936, two thirds of Americans thought that three or more children were ideal, and the meannumber of children preferred was 3.6. Those preferences held steady for the nextthree decades, through 1967. A poll conducted in 1973 recorded a substantial change -- with preference for three or more children declining to 51% and the mean number preferred dropping to 2.8. By 1980 the figures had dropped to 40% favoring three or more children, with an average number of 2.5. U.S. opinion on this issue has remained stable at this level since then.

Declining fecundity in the developed world is the most potent problem first world nations face. Yet it gets almost no attention. Bring it up and you're apt to get a baffled look followed by a response about how there are too many poor children in the world. Indeed there are. And there's not enough rich ones. Check out the CIA Factbook's fertility ranking by country. The top three baby bastions (average births per woman), and their PPP:

This obvious but often overlooked inverse relationship between wealth and procreation augments the gap between the haves and have-nots. It also has a dysgenic effect. If Bill and Melinda Gates have one child, at their passing the child stands to inherit $60 billion (for argument's sake--I realize the Gates have three children and do not plan on giving them much at this point). If Joe and Mary Janitor have five kids and a net worth of $50,000, each kid will get $10,000. This looks too much like Latin America. We have a prince with $60 billion and five paupers with a measly $10 grand.

If we swap fecundity, we start to look more like middle America. The Gates have five kids and the Janitors only have one. Thus, the five mini-Gates inherit $12 billion apiece, and the Janitor gets $50,000. From a prince and five paupers we go to five members of the aristocracy and one worker with enough to buy a modest house.

These are extremes, but they illustrate conceptually how the affluent having many kids and the impoverished having fewer children closes the wealth gap. In addition, IQ is largely heriditary (between 40% and 90% on the fringes, with 75% being a common assumption) and IQ and income have a moderate, (IQ explaining around 15%) statistically significant correlation. In the second scenario with five Gates and one Janitor, we close the wealth disparity and raise the population's average intelligence.

The child tax credit gives US taxpayers $1,000 (not a deduction from income, but an actual credit, which is essentially as good as cash) for each urchin, but it begins phasing out at an adjusted gross income of $110,000 for married couples and $75,000 for singles (it's completely gone at $129,001 and $94,001, respectively). The credit should instead increase as AGI increases to encourage those most able to have children to produce the little scamps, and conversely discourage those who cannot afford children from bringing them into life with the card's stacked against them. This proposal may sound callous, but if knee-jerk emotive reactions are discarded in favor of rationality, it really makes sense.

We need policies that raise the number of immigrants of merit who come to the US and financial incentives that encourage natives, especially the middle and upper classes, to have more children. We can reverse this dwindling trend in births, but if we don't, dire consequences await.

Even those who support radical cuts in carbon-dioxide emissions are realizing that the Kyoto Protocol is a failed instrument for achieving their goals. "The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge," says British Prime minister Tony Blair.

Of the industrialised nations, only Britain seems to be having little trouble meeting its commitments, having even surpassed its target of 12.5 pct by cutting emissions 13 pct. Germany also reduced its emissions impressively, by 18.2 pct, but was short of its target of 21 pct, while France (1.9 pct), Luxembourg (16 pct) and Sweden (2.3 pct) also cut emissions.

This marginally effective push to reduce emissions by many moral posturing industrialized nations (US and Australia are notably absent) reminds me of a sequence in Joseph Heller's Cath-22. Yossarian is tending to another soldier's arm wound taken from enemy fire, feverishly wrapping it up to stop the bleeding. In his momentary relief from getting the relatively minor injury to the arm taken care of, Yossarian realizes the guy's abdomen has been obliterated and his guts are literally spilling out onto the floor. China and India are collectively that abdomen:

By 2012, the plants in three key countries - China [1.926 billion], India [486 million], and the United States [275 million] - are expected to emit as much as an extra 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to a Monitor analysis of power-plant construction data. In contrast, Kyoto countries by that year are supposed to have cut their CO2 emissions by some 483 million tons.

In the ideal world where the Kyoto nations met their obligations, we could expect to see six times that amount added from just three other countries. The entire Kyoto protocols, if they were carried out to term would not even offset the growth of India. Of course, almost all the countries that are a party to Kyoto are failing dismally at even halting emissions growth, let alone decreasing them. And the explosion in China is the real story. Because oil is expensive and unstable, the PRC is turning to other methods of feeding its insatiable need for energy, namely coal:

"Environmental optimists were assuming the world was going to switch to gas, but when you're short of gas you use your own coal," says Philip Andrews-Speed, a China energy expert at the University of Dundee, in Scotland. "What you're seeing with China and the others is the cheapness and security of coal just overwhelming the desire to be clean."

It's unfair to expect China to halt emissions growth, given that the country's PPP of $5,600 is among the world's lowest outside of Africa, northern South and Central America, and the crapistans. Being told to put the brakes on economic efficiency by countries with a standard of living ten times higher than their own is understandably scoffed at by the Chinese, who are building a new power plant every ten days or so.

Trying to regulate away greenhouse emissions is a pipe dream. Until alternative energy sources (check out Randall Parker's Futurepundit for insightful news about and analysis of them) become economically viable, they are going to be resisted because of their obvious deleterious effect on growth. Governments should be focusing on developing, directly and through tax incentives, these alternative sources so that industry will be encouraged rather than coerced into using them.

Tony Blair is right in pointing out that so long as lower emissions are cost-ineffective, mandating them will remain an exercise in futility. Companies will simply move to nations with more lax enforcement, further injuring the highly regulated nations and rewarding those with liberal allowances for emissions. By pouring money into research, perhaps something similar to the Manhattan Project but this time for energy production, governments and environmental groups can work to obsolesce fossil fuels like oil and coal.

Projects like FutureGen can help make fossil production much cleaner. This is the only way that emissions are going to be substantively cut. In addition, it would enhance US national security and be economically beneficial. Thumping morally superior chests and clamoring for draconian government anti-business mandates will solve nothing and only hurt those nations that buy into it.

Nuclear is currently the most feasible--it's cheap, removes dependency on foreign countries, and doesn't spit out any emissions. Although it is far off, nuclear fusion could plausibly provide an almost infinite amount of energy from a single source. Congress, with Bush's backing, has thankfully made some push to build more nuclear power plants in the US. Photovoltaics (solar), batteries, biodiesel, wind, and hydro are in play as well, although none of them are very competitive against fossil fuels at this juncture.

Middle-class mothers in France could be paid up to €1,000 (£675) a month - almost the minimum wage - to stop work for a year and have a third child under a government scheme to boost the birthrate, already among the highest in Europe.

France is in trouble.

In a Europe facing serious demographic decline, France's buoyant birthrate of 1.9 children a woman is well above the average of 1.4 and surpassed only by Ireland. France can also boast one of the EU's highest rates of female employment: 81% of women between 25 and 49 are in work, including 75% of those with two children (and 51% of those with more than two).

Indeed, all of the West is in trouble. The population replenishment rate is 2.1 children per woman. Who in the West (I am using the term broadly to encompass not only Western Europe, the US, and Canada, but also Australia, New Zealand, and Japan) is fecund enough to stop from shrinking? Using the list I just gave, the answer is no one. Here are the births-per-woman for some countries of interest:

The only country above replenishment that can legitimately be considered 'Western' is Israel, at 2.44 births per woman. But certainly that boon is coming from the less endowed Sephardic (Middle Eastern Jews) community and from miasmic Palestinians living in Israel rather than from the incredibly industrious Ashkenazi (European) Jews.

The notoriously proud French want more Frenchies. They could open up the floodgates to more Islamic immigration, but Europe is collectively shifting away from it's belief that all people are essentially the same. The brutal murder of Theo Van Gogh following a film critical of Islam, the London and Madrid terrorist bombings, the Turkish-German underclass, just to name a few, are hardening the Old Continent against its destructive post-modern liberalism. Turkey, which would open up a conduit for Middle Easterners to flood into Europe, is likely not going to be admitted to the EU.

Say there are 50 men and 50 women that dropped out of the sky as infants (total 100). Each live to 95 and give birth to one child (the women does) at age 30. Thus, after 30 years we have 150 people. Of those 50 newborns, 25 are men and 25 are women who will follow the same pattern. Thirty years later, we have 175 people total: 100 at age sixty, 50 at thirty, and 25 infants (population still growing).

Another 30 years, with the same birth cycles for our third generation (say 13 are women, 12 are men) and we now have 188 people total. But the age distribution is economically disastrous: 100 people are ninety, 50 are sixty, 25 are thirty, and 13 are infants. Supporting the people on top is smothering the younger generations, especially the 25 who are currnetly thirty years old.

The economic burden of supporting the senescent people makes it likely that they will have even fewer children than they did (relative to their parents). It's a vicious circle. This is where the West is today. Thirty years later the proportions are the same, but the population has finally started shrinking (because the largest first generation finally kicked the bucket): 50 people at ninety, 25 at sixty, 13 at thirty, and six infants (94 total people).

Now we are in free-fall. Thirty years later at the same births per woman, and we have only 47 people (25 at ninety, 13 at sixty, 6 at thirty, and 3 infants). If we do finally get our act (er, bodies) together, it takes generations for the momentum to actually shift. Let's say instead of plummeting, that last generation actually became thrice as fertile and had three kids per woman: 25 at ninety, 13 at sixty, 6 at thirty, and 9 infants (total 53). The next generation similarly has three children per woman: 13 at ninety, 6 at sixty, 9 at thirty, and 13 infants (total 41). Three generations into three-children women: 6 at ninety, 9 at sixty, 13 at thirty, and 20 infants (total 48). Four generations of birthing well above the replenishment rate, and we still have less people than we did at the height of the single-child generation.

This is where the West is headed. For the US, we are lucky that our brethren across the Atlantic are going off the precipice first. Bringing the third-world into the US may fix the problem but will breed one that is much worse--we will become a mosaic of low-IQed, culturally-backward special-interests groups fighting in a democratic spoils system for a short-lived bounty. Here's a better solution: Be a patriot. Marry a beautiful, intelligent woman (or man as it were), make lots of money, and churn out lots of kids.